Light In The Attic gives the soundtrack to one of my favorite films, Ralph Bakshi’s “Wizards” a proper vinyl release. Previously available on CD only, Wyrd War presents the original motion picture soundtrack to Ralph Bakshi’s animated masterwork Wizards, on vinyl for the very first time! Ostensibly Bakshi’s “family film,” this almost impossibly PG rated post-apocalyptic “fantasy epic of peace and magic” emerged like a strange fungus through fissures in the Hollywood machine in 1977 to psychedelicize unsuspecting audiences with slouching android assassins, nearly nude fairy wenches, supernatural siblings skirmishing for world domination between slugs of cheap wine, demonic dog soldiers belly-crawling through skeletal landscapes of airbrushed fog, and, perhaps most memorably, terrifying genocidal elfin warfare punctuated with Leni Riefenstahl stock footage, all perfectly choreographed to a beautifully ethereal sci-fi jazz soundtrack seemingly scorched with atomic energy. Such music! Composer Andrew Belling delivered one of the first truly musical scores for a major Hollywood film composed almost entirely for ARP 2500 and ARP 2600 synthesizers. 40 years after its theatrical release, the music of Wizards continues to fascinate, perplex and inspire viewers, like a beautifully handcrafted Rorschach test of the late 20th century’s excesses, hopes and increasingly foreboding anxieties of things to come.
Peep the sound clip and original 1977 movie trailer below.
The LP is available for pre order via LITA with a release date of 6/21/17.